CEO Mikael Philipsson relocated to the States
A lot is happening in the industry in the US at the moment – The Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program provides $42.45 billion to expand high-speed internet access and to bridge the Digital Divide, and our US team is growing. To be at the right place at the right time, our CEO Mikael Philipsson has moved from Sweden to Florida and below you find a short interview with him where he tells us about his plans for the coming months:
Good morning Mikael, you moved from Sweden to Florida a couple of weeks ago – can you tell us a little bit about your background and your move to the US?
Good morning! Well, first of all, it is very exciting to be here in the States as it makes it much easier to drive our expansion in the US and Canada. We moved here at the beginning of August, so we have had some time to get used to the nice and sunny Florida summer weather. We already feel at home, and being closer to our US team is amazing.
My background is within the telecom industry, where I’ve spent a good 20 years. My main experience is from the operator side, as I was the CEO of a fiber operator that built fiber infrastructure across the Nordic region, addressing large enterprises and offering wholesale fiber to large carriers. About ten years ago, the company made a strategic decision to move into the residential market, and since then, has addressed millions of homes with it’s fiber-to-the-home offering.
With this background, having personally faced all the challenges you meet when scaling an FTTH business, I got very attracted to what COS had developed, and that quickly made me take the step from my initial position on the board of directors to taking on the role as CEO a little over two years ago.
COS’s software was built during the crazy fiber race that started in Sweden in the early 2000s when there was a need for solutions like COS Business Engine that enable extremely fast growth through automation and optimization of both the revenue side and the network operations. This combination is unique and what operators, who are the same situation as we were 10 years ago, are dreaming of.
The fiber race is taking off here in North America now, so this is really the place to be. We have been active in the US since 2013, and we have an amazing team here. We are expanding as we see a strong demand from fiber operators in the need for software to support their growth and optimize the KPIs driving their business.
What are your plans for the coming months?
I will focus on growing the team here, meeting up with customers/partners, and attending several conferences: in mid-October, I will attend INCOMPAS in Tampa and Calix ConneXions in Vegas at the end of October.
Finally, I am really looking forward to using my and the team’s joint experienc and software suite to help operators in this market to excel in the fiber race and to avoid the mistakes we made. Fiber infrastructure is a game-changer and hugely impacts all aspects of our society as exactly everything is digitized. COS Systems has an active role to play in this fiber race. It is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that I and the team don’t want to miss!
